By Lisa Fazio
Publication Date: 2025-12-11 13:37:00
Zohran Mamdani as a scary trick-or-treater, Gavin Newsom body-slamming Donald Trump, and Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero. This is not the basis for an elaborate joke. Rather, these are all examples of current AI-generated political videos. New user-friendly tools — and the acceptance of those tools by politicians — mean these fake videos are quickly becoming commonplace in American politics.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about many of the videos is how clearly fake they are. Rather than attempting to trick the viewer into believing that the event depicted actually occurred, the videos serve a different purpose. President Trump didn’t post a video of himself wearing a crown and throwing feces on a group of protesters in a fighter plane because he wanted people to believe that the flight actually happened. He probably did it to express his feelings about the protest and to create a joke among his supporters.
Fears about the political impact of AI-generated videos have…
